//------------------------------//
// Rocks 
// Story: Resonating Souls 
// by ScarletRibbon 
//------------------------------//

Several hundred feet below the surface, Chris stopped and raised his hand.  Rebecca stopped short.  "Now, between you and me, you're going to feel strange," he said.

"... What?"  Rebecca couldn't make any sense of Chris' warning.

He clarified.  "I just walked through 'The Veil'.  At least, that's what we're calling it.  It's ... hard to explain, because we really don't know what it is.  The Veil is now between you and me."  He reached his hand back toward her, his arm half extended and holding steady.  "Right where my hand is.  As you pass through it, you're going to feel a strange, tingling sensation through your entire body."

Rebecca nodded hesitantly, uncertain if Chris had gone crazy or if she just wasn't understanding anything he was saying.  She continued her descent, and a few steps later, as Chris had marked with his hand, a bizarre and warming feeling washed over her, as if her entire body had been pelted with fine raindrops during a wind storm.  She paused, touching her face with a hand to make sure some strange substance wasn't clinging to her like a spiderweb.  Nothing felt out of place.  She shuddered.  "What ... is it?  Does it go away?  Do you get used to it?"

Chris shook his head.  "I haven't gotten used to it yet.  It doesn't bother me, really, but you never stop being aware.  As long as you're down here, you're going to feel it."  Rebecca wasn't too keen on that thought.  "It also makes you feel warm, and you're going to feel that intensify a bit as we go.  Saves on heating the place a little bit when you can keep the place a few degrees colder and still stay comfortable."

The two kept walking, the narrow passageway illuminated by their flashlights as they proceeded.  Rebecca idly noticed that the walls, like the entryway on the surface, appeared to have been chiseled out by a large machine, but she couldn't figure out exactly what sort of machine it might be.  The markings weren't quite like anything she had seen before, and she also couldn't think of a machine that could easily fit into such an awkward stairwell.

As Chris had told her before their descent, her legs were not used to staircases this long.  The stairs themselves were inconsistent in both size and depth, and as she continued down the stairs, the staggered spacing was starting to wear her out faster than she expected.  Still, she wanted to get comfortable inside.  There would be no stopping for a break, so she occupied herself thinking about her new situation.

Her life on the surface had been very routine.  Rebecca had lived alone for several years after college, and her previous job hadn't given her any satisfaction.  She had a degree in Mineralogy, specializing in physical mineralogy in particular.  As it turned out, despite her fascination with rocks, studying them all day hadn't been very exciting.  It had become a regular activity for her to scour job postings in her spare time to see what else might be on offer.  Edwards Holdings had recognized her achievements however, and had provided her an opportunity for something fresh:  First-hand research on a previously undiscovered kind of stone.  It wasn't the complete change in career path she'd been pondering, but the pay was good and the potential for something interesting to result from her work was a nice incentive.  On the other hand, relocating to an underground facility on a remote island north of Norway was not what she had really wanted, either.

After about twenty-five minutes of the grueling descent, the passage flattened out and began widening into a larger chamber, the walls and floor made of the same smoothed granite she had noticed up above.  From the contours, Rebecca guessed that the room had naturally formed into an underground cave, and then someone discovered it and smoothed down all of the stone.  Six incandescent lamps mounted on the far wall provided ample illumination, and in the middle of the same wall was another steel door, not entirely unlike the one that guarded the entrance above.  A small monitor with several colored buttons was mounted next to it.  Chris strode up to the terminal and pressed the green button, and then turned to her.  "This will take a moment."

They waited.  Rebecca's legs were screaming for a break after all the stairs, and standing around doing nothing was not doing them any favors.  After a painful ten minutes or so, a female face popped up on the monitor.  "Hey, Chris.  It's about time you get here, I was about to start dinner.  You have the new girl with you?"

Chris smiled.  "Oh, some good news!  I'm famished."  He laughed, guesturing toward the door.  "Yes, I have Rebecca with me.  Can you let us in?  I'd like to get her set up with a security card as soon as possible."  Sarah's projection on the monitor laughed and nodded.  After a sharp clicking sound from the door, Chris grasped the handle and turned it, pushing the door inward.  Rebecca followed behind.

On the other side of the door the cavern continued, and they clicked their flashlights off as several lamps along the passageway provided just enough light to see.  Like the room she had just stood in before, the walls appeared to be naturally shaped, but then smoothed down by tools.  As Chris led her through the facility, they passed several other steel-framed doors, each one with a nameplate indicating the purpose of the area beyond, before stopping in front of a door labeled 'Security'.  He pulled his black card from his pocket again, and at its touch the door slid open, just as the one at the outside entrance had.  A strange thought struck Rebecca.  "Chris?  What's with all the security?"

Chris smiled.  "Two layers of security.  I can get down here with my card, but if someone took my card and no one recognized them, they wouldn't be able to proceed any further.  If they got inside, most of the important doors down here still have the keycard lock."

Rebecca rubbed her temples and sighed.  "I mean, this place is really obscure and in the middle of nowhere; security through obscurity, so to speak.  Why spend so much resources on the added security?"

He beckoned her over to the other side of the room where a computer sat.  "I know, and I agree with you.  I'm paid to run it, though, so I can't really look a gift horse in the mouth.  Let me get this all ready to go and we can get you set up with a security card.  It'll give you a bit of freedom around here."


<><><><><>


Twilight Sparkle was re-shelving some books when Rarity delicately against the door of Golden Oaks Library.  Twilight turned to face her friend, continuing to shelve the books blindly with her telekinesis.  "Hello, Rarity.  You really don't need to knock, the door was standing wide open."

Rarity's eyes went wide, "Oh no, Princess Twilight.  I would be impolite to simply barge in uninvited!"

Twilight frowned.  "Rarity, you know I don't want to be called that."

"Oh, certainly, Twilight, but regardless of your feelings on the matter, I will greet you with the respect your position deserves."  A sigh escaped Twilight's lips as she rolled her eyes as Rarity continued, "May I have a moment of your time?"

"Absolutely.  I was just getting ready to close up.  Do you need a book?  Or do you need to talk?  You know I'm a good listener ... uh, even if I can't always give the best advice about your stallion friends."  She grinned awkwardly.  Behind her, a small purple dragon coughed.  Twilight turned and shot him a sharp glance.  Spike was her number one assistant, and though he had gotten over his old infatuation with Rarity after meeting a friendly lady dragon, he still wasn't comfortable listening to Rarity talk about her relationships.

Rarity shook her head.  "Oh, no, no, no.  I'm just here to ask you a special favor you see, but first I think I would like to just chat.  It has been quite a while since last we simply talked."  Rarity stepped inside.  "I've also brought over a new tea that I found today in Canterlot.  It's simply marvelous!  I'm sure you'll like it!"

She went off to start the tea while Twilight cleared off books from the central table so they would have a place to sit.  When her task was complete, Twilight called over to the kitchen.  "How is the tea coming along?"

"Darling, are you worried about my ability to make tea?  I'm not Sweetie Belle, you know."

A chuckle escaped Twilight's lips.  Sweetie Belle could burn water.  Literally.  Twilight wasn't sure if it was a magic trick or not, but Rarity had insisted it was Sweetie's natural ineptitude in the kitchen.  "So, why were you in Canterlot today?"

Rarity re-entered the central room levitating a tray with three teacups and a teapot on it, vapor softly trailing from the spout.  Gently setting the tray down, Rarity started to explain as she poured tea into each cup.  "Well, you see, your sister-in-law recently contracted me for one hundred ninety-six sets of matching outfits for your brother's anniversary.  So today, I was in Canterlot taking measurements.  It's quite wonderful, really.  At first, I was completely overwhelmed by the scope of this contract; as you know, their anniversary is only three months away, so I needed to come up with designs I could replicate easily.  I spent most of last two months working on the basic designs, and now that the designs have been finalized, I need to actually complete the outfits.  Of course, the that all took me much longer than I had hoped, because I needed to have fifty-four distinctly different designs!"

Twilight interrupted, confused.  "Fifty-four?  Why in the world would she need so many different designs?"

"Well, you see, she wants her anniversary to be a celebration of love, so each pony in attendance will be wearing a design specific to the stallion or mare he or she is in love with.  And, of course, with three different kinds of ponies, and three possible pairings of genders, it will take fifty-four different designs to cover all the bases.  Or ponies, as the case is."

Twilight stared at Rarity, astonished.  "You designed fifty-four outfits in just a couple of months?"  She knew Rarity was inspired, but she couldn't imagine that two designs a day, or more, would be an easy feat, even for Rarity.

Shaking her head, Rarity chuckled softly.  "It wasn't easy, dear.  I suppose I could have taken the lazy, but less costly, route and simply made a single design and then modify it ever so slightly for each each variation I needed ... but that just wouldn't be me!"  She drew herself up straight, raising her chin and bringing her hoof to her chest.  "I am, after all, a designer," she put her hoof down, "not a tailor.  And as such, I would much rather impress my clients by going the extra mile."

Numbers started running through Twilight's head, and her eyes began to wander as she became lost in thought.  One hundred ninety-six pairs of outfits meant three hundred ninety-two outfits altogether.  The anniversary was about three months away.  Three months times fifteen days was forty-five days, which means ... She looked back to Rarity.  "Do you really think you can get six outfits completed each day for three months?  And if you could, do you even have the materials to do that?"

Rarity laughed nervously.  "Well ... you see, that's why I'm here tonight.  I need some fabric delivered, but it's scheduled to arrive at my boutique while I will be taking measurements for guests in the Crystal Empire.  I was wondering if I could perhaps have it delivered here, instead.  That way you could hold on to it for me, and when I return, I can just pick it up here."  Twilight noticed Rarity bounced softly on her hooves as she spoke, her curled mane springing up and down in an exaggerated fashion along with her.  She suspected that Rarity was either excited or nervous.  Or perhaps both; she wasn't normally so giddy in everyday conversation unless something important was going on.  Twilight supposed a project this large was worth being excited over and pushed the thought from her mind.

"Well, I don't mind having it dropped off here, but I'm concerned about the amount of material."  She frowned, trying to think of a place she could keep a lot of stuff.  "The library isn't really that big.  What space I have is filled with books, my lab equipment, and my living spaces.  I don't really have a feel for how much fabric would be needed for your project, but even after you've trimmed away a lot of fabric in the design process, four hundred outfits takes up a lot of room.  And now we're talking about the uncut cloth!"

Spike looked up from his now empty teacup.  "Gee, Twilight.  I don't think storage is that big a deal.  We have that storage closet upstairs that isn't being used.  There's a bunch of old junk in there, but we can clean it out."

Twilight nodded.  The closet would likely be sufficient.  "That is true, Spike.  I guess I just never thought of that, because we never use it."

Rarity beamed.  "Oh, thank you.  I knew I could count on you, Twilight.  You are always so helpful to everyone who needs it."  She leaned down and pecked Spike on the cheek, causing his cheeks to flush slightly.  "And thank you for coming up with an easy solution."  Rarity stood up straight again.  "I just so happen to have some free time tonight.  Why don't we clean out that closet together?"


<><><><><>


"... So we really don't know who originally dug out this place, but we do know that they found some strange stone.  But it leaves us with a lot of questions.  Why did they dig down in the first place?  What happened to them?  We don't really have the answers to these questions.  What we do know is that the stone we found down here is unique.  Its molecular structure appears to be granite, but it's appearance and texture are more like glass.  And the physical properties are nothing like any other stone we've seen before."  The communications manager, Sarah Earnhardy, was explaining to Rebecca some basic stuff about the lab as the two of them ate a meatloaf dinner together in the lounge.

"You mean Edwards Holdings didn't build this facility?"

"No.  Joseph found this place while doing an archaeological survey of the islands in the area.  This entire cavern system, even the staircase up to the surface, was already in place when he found it.  Originally, it was all stone and completely dark.  The company is responsible for all the other additions that make the area secure and livable, but every effort has been made to preserve the original stonework for study."

"That's very strange.  Any idea how long ago this was carved out?"

"Well, he found some bones from what he hoped was a new species of animal in here.  Sent samples off for testing.  The results only raised more questions about this place."

Rebecca furrowed her brow.  "What do you mean?"

Talia, an organic chemist who had been listening from the other side of the room, cut in.  "You were brought here to research a new stone, but several of us here are tasked with trying to learn more about this long dead creature.  For starters, the body had well-preserved tissue that had recoverable DNA.  This place isn't really cold enough to preserve DNA under normal conditions, and usable DNA shouldn't survive in a dead body for more than a few days, as it decays rapidly if not maintained by normal biological processes.  That would lead you to think it had recently died, but it was just bones; something recently dead wouldn't have already decayed into nothing."

"Well, it's really cold outside," Rebecca offered.  "Maybe the veil didn't affect it for some reason, and it froze?"

Talia pointed toward the ceiling. "Up there?  The surface temperatures here are below freezing, even during the summer, but here underground geothermal heating keeps the average temperature higher.  Even disregarding that, it's not cold enough on the surface anyway.  Temperatures cold enough to prevent DNA from decaying over a few thousand years are extremely uncommon, so we were quite baffled by the results.  That wasn't all that was strange, though.  When the bones were dated, they came back as being over three thousand years old.  The DNA sample also had sixty-four chromosomes, and while the remains didn't match that of a typical horse, that's the only known species with sixty-four chromosomes large enough to have bones that size."

Confusion set in.  Rebecca shook her head a few times.  "So, this place is three thousand years old, at the least?  And despite that, appears to have relatively modern stonework?  That doesn't make sense."

Sarah chimed in again.  "It's possible that the stonework was done in phases, and the bones were just never disturbed.  But it's hard to explain why a horse would ever have been down here at all.  Three thousand years ago, a horse would have never been anywhere close to this part of the world, and even with modern technology, it's difficult to comfortably keep horses this far north.  For that matter, how would a horse have survived to get to this island?  We just don't know, and every clue we've found so far makes the answers feel more distant."

Rebecca sat back and tried to process everything she had been told.  A new kind of stone?  Such things weren't normally found near the surface; these were discoveries typically made in deep oceans or in very deep drilling operations.  The animal was clearly outside of her area of expertise.  Her brow furrowed as she pondered the reality of this new job.  "Can you take me to the excavation site?"

Talia peered at Rebecca through the small, rounded lenses of her glasses.  "Well, we were going to do that tomorrow, but it can't hurt.  Follow me."  Rebecca stood up and Talia lead her out of the lounge and through a winding passageway she hadn't yet been down.  The path terminated with a staircase, similar to the one she had descended earlier, leading them down another one hundred feet or so.  A cavernous system of narrow passageways shooting off in various directions opened up before her at the bottom of the stairs.  For as far as Rebecca could see, suspended electric lamps fully illuminated each passage wide enough for a person to squeeze into, but she couldn't be sure if all of the deeper sections were lit as well.  But that wasn't what was really catching her attention.  

Sandwiched in the walls between layers of granite and dolomite were strange veins of a black stone.  Light was reflecting off the stone in a prismatic fashion, causing the black stone to occasionally appear in all the colors of the rainbow at certain angles.  Rebecca reached out and touched some of it, feeling the glassy texture.  "It reminds me of rainbow obsidian, but it most definitely isn't.  Do we know anything about it?"

"A little bit.  Not much yet."

Rebecca was led deeper through the strange cavern, into a widened space where someone had clearly been chipping away at the stone for a while.  Small fragments of the stone were laid out upon a white sheet on the ground while hammers, chisels and some larger stone chunks rested on a makeshift table.  Talia picked one of the hammers from the table.  "While we were chipping away at it, we discovered the stone reacts strangely to blunt force.  Thin pieces that you would expect to shatter when struck with a hammer will instead shine brightly at the point of impact for a moment, and it reacts as if all the kinetic force was just gone.  We aren't really sure what's going on with that.  It goes against all known physical laws.  Chiseling at it seems to work just fine, which is probably a good thing, as we probably wouldn't be able to extract it otherwise."  She demonstrated by hitting a flat piece of the stone.  Where the hammer had struck, the stone glowed with a faint yellow gleam for about three seconds before fading out.

"That's certainly ... strange.  But why is this work being carried out here?  Why don't you just take samples of the stone and send them to labs outside?"

"Do you remember The Veil on the way in?  Did Chris explain it to you?"

"Uh, I guess.  I mean, I didn't really feel he explained it very well, but I remember it.  It's pretty distinct."

"When you take this stuff out past the veil, all it's unusual properties - the rainbow sheen, the strange reactions to being struck, even the glassy surface - it all goes away.  And you know what it acts like?  Regular, everyday granite.  The only thing it retains is the dark color."